From Bert Is Evil To Flipboard: 15 Years Of The Greatest Webby Award Winners

David-Michel Davies is executive director of The Webby Awards and chair of Internet Week New York.

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The Webby Awards will celebrate their 15th anniversary on June 13th, and in Web years that amounts to a lifetime.

When the first Webbys was presented back in 1997, the Internet mapped a new frontier whose enormous potential was obvious, even in the excruciatingly slow dial-up days.

Each year since, the Webbys have captured a snapshot of a revolution in progress: the evolution of the Web from a slightly enigmatic subculture to a mainstream medium whose cultural impact rivals – or has even surpassed – that of the printing press.

As we gear up for the 15th Annual Webby Awards, which will be livestreamed on Facebook on June 13, we thought it would be both fun and instructive to look back at the most influential Webby Awards from the past 14 years – from early winners like “Bert is Evil,” which paved the way for today’s Internet memes, to modern powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter.